


Grief

by MetaAllu



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Grief/Mourning, M/M, Minor Character Death, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-26
Updated: 2012-03-26
Packaged: 2017-11-02 13:49:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/369666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MetaAllu/pseuds/MetaAllu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mummy is dead, Sherlock is a prat, Mycroft cries a lot, and for some reason Sherlock can fix cars.  "The Hollow Men" belongs, of course, to T. S. Eliot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Grief

There are things: waiting, gathering, building and rolling like waves breaking on the shore. It's a slow process and it leaves him itching, struggling for breath under the popping metal components of a car in summer heat. There are crisp pages of yellowing books from long ago, still turned and dog-eared, and taped back together, with thrift store price tags on their spines. There's a big empty house that sits atop a hill, filled with memories and empty hallways, with stacks of boxes by the front steps, and as John Watson carries out another one, Sherlock watches his nails dig into the cardboard. He looks up and he frowns. "Oi!" he says. "Are you going to help, or are you just going to stand there being useless and looking contemplative?"

"I rather thought I would do the second, actually," Sherlock deadpans, and after a moment, John gives a sharp bark of laughter, mutters something doubtlessly unpleasant under his breath and goes back inside. 

Mycroft appears at his side, leans in. "You are being rather useless," he agrees; he _always_ agrees with Watson, it would seem. Sherlock eyes him, but he doesn't dignify him with a response, petulantly thinking to himself _As if you are any better_ , because Mycroft has stood at his side for the last hour with a hankie in his hand, making dreadful snuffling and honking sounds. Sherlock does earnestly hope he doesn't intend to put that hankie back in his pocket when he's done with it. 

"I've a flat to get back to," he says instead. "And a car to fix." 

"I didn't know you could fix cars," Mycroft says, then as an afterthought tacks on: "Surely not even you are this heartless, Sherlock. Mummy is—" 

"I am well aware," is Sherlock's terse reply. "What mummy is." 

Dead is what she is, as her tombstone can well attest. 

There are things, and soon Sherlock will not be able to breathe for the weight they leave on his chest. 

* 

"She was a good woman," Sherlock said at her funeral. "And I loved her very much." 

* 

"It seems rather useless," John says. "Being able to fix cars. I'd have thought you'd delete it." 

The grounds are quiet save for the song birds, and the sound of an industrial lawn mower somewhere on the great, spread out hill and field below. John hasn't bothered to look for it, more concentrated on Sherlock, whose rolled himself under the belly of an old American four-by four, nothing but his legs visible. Sometimes John wishes he had Sherlock's skills of deduction, because of course the world's greatest consulting detective is a mystery himself, and John hasn't got a clue what to do, or what to say, or even what's going on. 

"It wouldn't be useless if our car broke down," Sherlock answers, voice muffled by a couple of layers of scrap metal. 

John can't argue with that. 

* 

Their car does break down eventually, inevitably, and Sherlock brings it sputtering back to life with a wrench and a paperclip, and then he sits sourly in the passenger seat with a grease stain on his cheek, and says that if he doesn't have a shower soon, he may actually shrivel up and die. He doesn't seem to find anything wrong with this statement, despite the fact his mother's only been buried for a month. 

The detour to Mycroft's isn't bad, anyway, all things considered, even if he does assume the worst, and his wife is horribly doting, and after Sherlock and Mycroft go upstairs, she leans towards John and says, "Those Holmes men, hm?" and then winks as if there's something he should know. It wouldn't be as bad if John didn't feel somehow affronted by his lack of knowledge. 

* 

Sherlock learns to juggle fire. They're in a little nowhere town collecting scraps and there is a carnival. Standing in the middle of a crowd is a man juggling fire. He's dressed like some kind of fool, with skin like freshly-turned earth. It reminds Sherlock of his mother's grave, and the wild smile on the man's face of his mother herself. He watches with his ever-watchful eye — God's or the devil's? Every man will tell you differently, and some men will tell you they are one and the same — and then he hands his coat to John and steps closer, staring up to the man, mounted on a small wooden stage. There are no questions. The man passes one of the torches to him. 

The crowd gasps and Sherlock hears an indignant _Sherlock!_ amongst the throng. He steps up onto the platform as he's passed another torch. It's a simple matter for now, holding a torch in each hand. _You caught them_ , the juggler's eyes say. _So what?_ and then he passes a third. 

The principal of juggling in and of itself is fairly simple and mathematical. It's the wildness and unpredictable nature of the fire that presents the challenge. It's about moving, it's about adapting, it's about becoming one with something that has no soul or nature or pattern. Sherlock relishes in the challenge and kinhood of the flame. 

He scorches his sleeves, ash and soot and oil, and at the end of the day he tosses out his shirt and settles in front of the telly with a cup of tea, and John Watson eyes him from across the room, but he says nothing. Sherlock understands that. John is often predictable, often boring. It's the moments where he isn't that Sherlock lives for, if indeed he lives for anything at all but himself, and sometimes he doubts even that. Madness is a funny thing; he is called a mad man and a genius. He is called a psychopath and a sociopath. None of it is quite right, but none of it is quite wrong either. He is told to mourn his mother's death. He feels sorry for her and her non-existence; and sometimes not even that. 

"How did you do that?" John asks, finally. 

"I can't remember," Sherlock replies. "It was useless, anyway." 

* 

_"The eyes are not here/ There are no eyes here/ In this valley of dying stars/ In this hollow valley/ This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms"_

The gravestone carved out her name, carved out dates, and Sherlock was at peace with these solid things that he could understand. He was at peace with the sound of murmuring voices, and quiet dignified sobs. He recognized the sound of mourning, the low drudge of John Watson's voice with warm breath against his ear, even if he did not recognize the fresh earth under his shoes, or the already-dying daisies lying atop it. 

* 

There is a blue-eyed child in his dreams, with dark curls and solemn clothing. He has a blue scarf which trails behind him into the darkness, and he wears his mother's high heels. 

"Have you seen mummy?" he asks of Sherlock. "Sherlock, have you seen mummy?" 

And in Sherlock's right ear there is a voice: " _In this last of meeting places/ We grope together/ And Avoid speech/ Gathered on this beach of the tumid river"_

Sherlock knows all of the words. 

* 

"Where in god's name did you learn T.S. Eliot?" Sherlock says, sitting across the table from one John Watson, with Mycroft at his elbow, a plate of biscuits and bean's — peasant's food, but John had gone through mummy's pantry, and there hadn't been much left, in the end — in front of him. 

"Your mum had a book of it," Watson says, but Sherlock know that that isn't true, because they'd gone through her house after the funeral. Sherlock will never understand why it is that Watson insists on trying to keep secrets from him. It never works. 

Mycroft wrings his current hankie, staring balefully down at his supper. His wife, he said, has gone to stay at the summer house. The three of them sit in mummy's empty house, and Sherlock thinks about the car he has waiting to be fixed. 

It's agonizing, having Mycroft around. He'll often wake in the middle of the night and shuffle through the halls, weeping. John will get out of bed, and there will be a murmur of voices in the hallway, a whisper of tea, and then all three of them end up down in the kitchen, barefoot on the cold floor, drinking hot tea and emptying the cupboards of jammy dodgers. Sherlock sleeps in the afternoons, in the sitting room with the sun coming through his eyelids; and he dreams of long blue scarves, and a voice in his right ear. 

* 

Sherlock has a car for every colour of the rainbow, and a few for in between. He has a black one and a white one, and a silver one with the paint slowly chipping off. There's a children's nursery rhyme written on the wall of the garage in blue crayon, and one night John Watson finds him curled up covered in dust and crying. 

_"Sightless, unless..."_


End file.
